The California Birthday Book Part 28

THE NAVEL ORANGE 250 YEARS AGO.

Most Americans know an orange by sight, and we of California count it a blood relation. We do grow the best orange in the world, and ship thousands of loads of it in a year; and we have a modest notion that we invented it, and that we "know oranges." But the handsomest, the fullest and the most erudite treatise on oranges ever printed does not derive from California, nor yet from the Only Smart Nation.... On the contrary, it was printed in Rome in the year 1646.... More accurate drawings of these fruits have never been printed; and the ill.u.s.trations cover not only the varieties and even the "freaks" of the Golden Apple, but the methods of planting, budding, wall-training and housing it. Perhaps the point likeliest to jar our complacent ignorance is the fact that this venerable work describes and pictures seedless oranges, and even the peculiar "sport," now an established variety, which we know as the "Navel." Two hundred and fifty seven years ago it was called the "Female, or Foetus-bearing orange;" but no one today can draw a better picture, nor a more unmistakable, of a navel orange.

CHARLES F. LUMMIS, in _Out West._

AUGUST 6.

THE SIERRA NEVADAS.

Serene and satisfied! Supreme! As lone As G.o.d, they loom like G.o.d's archangels churl'd; They look as cold as kings upon a throne;

A line of battle-tents in everlasting snow.

JOAQUIN MILLER.

AUGUST 7.

TO THE VIOLET.

Welcome little violet, I gladly welcome thee; Peeping with thy dewy eyes So shyly out at me.

Modest little violet Hide not thy face away.

I love thee and thy sweet perfume, Thy purple-hued array.

Sweetest little violet, I'll pluck thee gently dear, I'll nurture thee so tenderly-- Then have of me no fear.

Sweetest little violet, Delight of every heart; No flow'ret rare is like thee fair, None praised as thou art.

BERTHA HIRSCH BARUCH.

AUGUST 8.

August is a word of dire import in the bird-lover's calendar. It means virtually the end of the bird season. The wooing and nesting and rearing the family are all over, and now looms before the feathered population that annual trouble--the change of dress, the only time in his life--happy soul!--that he has to concern himself about clothes.

In the business of getting a new suit he has more trouble than a fine lady, for he has to shake off the old garments, while getting the new, bit by bit, here a feather and there a feather, today a new wing-quill; tomorrow a new plume on his dainty breast.

OLIVE THORNE MILLER.

AUGUST 9.

CHILDREN IN A CALIFORNIA GARDEN.

Legendry and literature may be taught to your children in the garden.

Tell them the pretty story of how Cupid's mother gave the rose its thorns; the tale of the sensitive plant; and point out to them the equipment of the cacti for their strange, hard life on the desert; the lovely human faces filled with the sweetness of remembrance that we find in the pansy bed. Show them the delight of the swift-flying hummingbird in the red and yellow blossoms of the garden, and the sagacity of the oriole in building his nest near the lantana bush--so attractive to the insects upon which the scamp feeds.

BELLE SUMNER ANGIER, in _The Garden Book of California._

AUGUST 10.

ON JOAQUIN MILLER.

Sierra's poet! high and pure thy muse Enthroned doth sit amongst the stars and snows; And from thy harp olympian music flows, Of glacier heights and gleaming mountain dews.

Of western sea and burning sunset hues.

And we who look up--who on the plain repose, And catch faint glimpses of the mount that throws Athwart thy poet-sight diviner views.

And not alone from starry shrine is strung Thy lyre, but timed to gentler lay, That sings of children, motherhood and home, And lifts our hearts and lives to sweeter day.

Oh, bard of Nature's heart! thy name will rest Immortal in thy land--our Golden West!

DORA CURETON, in _Sunset Magazine._

AUGUST 11.

THE PESSIMIST.

The pessimist leads us into a land of desolation. He makes for the sight blossoms of ugliness; for the smell repellant odors; for the taste bitterness and gall; for the hearing harsh discord, and death for the touch that is the only relief from a desert whose scrawny life lives but to distress us.

ABBOTT KINNEY, in _Tasks By Twilight._

The leaves of the wild gourd, lying in great star shaped patches on the ground, drooped on their stems, and the spikes of dusty white sage by the road hung limp at the ends, and filled the air with their wilted fragrance. The sea-breeze did not come up, and in its stead gusts of hot wind from the north swept through the valley as if from the door of a furnace.

MARGARET COLLIER GRAHAM, in _Stories of the Foothills._

AUGUST 12.